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NFL’s Super Bowl Trivia

What Is It?
This year the super bowl offered three different ways for its audience to participate via text messaging. The NFL offered Super Bowl Trivia and the Vote for MVP campaigns. AOL sponsored the Vote for Your Favorite Ad campaign. The cost for each activity was between .50 and .99 cents

How to Get It?
1. Trivia – To opt in, you texted “play” to short-code 6161. Once sent, you received the first question. With every answer submitted, you either got an “incorrect” or “correct” reply, and a new question was then sent to the phone.

2. MVP – To vote for your favorite player, you texted “MVP” to short code 88288. You then received instructions on how to vote. Also sent was a text saying it cost .99 to vote for MVP.

3. Vote for your favorite ad – you voted by texting “vote” to short code 46265. Once registered (which you could do on-line as well), you receive a reminder the day of the game with a message stating don’t forget to vote for your favorite ad. To vote, you texted in the name of the brand presented in the ad and a quick description. The names of ads could also be found on AOL’s website.

From the View of MYIQ
Of all the campaign areas MYIQ has tested, this one was the most confusing. Extracting the insight from the panelists’ experiences of these three mobile programs was difficult. Why? Perhaps the whole idea of three different mobile programs live and at the same time for the same event was over-saturation. What can we glean? Any one of these programs, on their own, had some value to the consumer. Trivia was entertaining and allowed the consumer to test their knowledge and get instant feedback. MVP Voting empowered the consumer to participate in a way they had never done before. The Favorite Commercial Contest leveraged the peer-to-peer buzz that always surrounds the event and helped formalize that content.

All we can say is that each program had its merits, and each had little quirks that could stand improvement.

Learning
So yes, affinity audiences can be a great target for mobile services. Marketers should keep in mind, though, that these activities should add to the entertainment and not be a distraction. Fans want something fun and easy to use, so keep it simple for now. Perhaps these three programs could have been streamlined into one, where the consumer texted in, received a menu and then picked one in which to participate.

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